Sunday 5 November 2023

ICOM Red List of Afghanistan Antiquities at Risk

International Council of Museums 2006, ' Red List of Afghanistan Antiquities at Risk'. To be honest though, I'm not sure how useful this actually is. Of the seven pages of text, two are about ICOM, only four list artefacts rather superficially. The bit on legislation is inadequate (no links, refers to the World Heritage Convention which is nothing to do with this issue). It says: "The Red List of Afghanistan Antiquities at Risk is in no way exhaustive" (so what's it for? How is it envisaged this and its titchy little (and admittedly selective) pictures will be used in practice, by "museums, art dealers and collectors, customs officials and police officers" ... "to help them to recognize objects that could originate illegally from Afghanistan")? It is bonkers simply to say "any antiquity for sale said to be from Afghanistan should be treated with great caution and suspicion" because it is unlikely that an object illegally on the market will come to any of the above with a label saying where it is from !! As usual, a lot of the thyinking in the institutions is based on a model of the antiquities marjet as it was (imagined to be) back in the 1970s.

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